George Pardee Jr. Professor of International Sustainable Development & Regional Associate Dean Letters & Science

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics

Research Areas:  Forecasting Greenhouse Gas Emissions, impacts of air pollution on agriculture, Microeconomic Theory, Economics of Climate Change, and econometrics

Sample Projects: Adverse Reproductive Outcomes in a Population Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds in Drinking Water (with Martha Rogers, Gina Waterfield, Philippe Grandjean,  and David Sunding, 2018); Turning water into jobs: The impact of surface water deliveries on farm employment and fallowing in California’s San Joaquin Valley (with Dina Gorensteyn and David Sunding, 2018); Forecasting Urban Water Consumption in California: Rethinking Model Evaluation (with Steven Buck, Hilary Soldati, and David Sunding, 2018).

Professor

Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Research Areas: Biometeorology, biosphere-atmosphere trace gas fluxes

Sample Projects: Coordinated use of experimental measurements and theoretical models to understand the physical, biological, and chemical processes that control trace gas fluxes between the biosphere and atmosphere and to quantify their temporal and spatial variations. The spatial scales of this work ranges from the dimension of a leaf through the depth of plant canopies and the planetary boundary layer and the horizontal extent of landscapes.

Assistant Specialist in Cooperative Extension

Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Research Areas: Economics of water resources–water markets and adoption of water-saving technologies, agricultural and environmental economics.

Sample Projects: Water Prices, Water Use, and Adoption of Agricultural Technology: Empirical Evidence from California Groundwater with Katrina Jessoe at UC Davis and Economics of Groundwater Quality in Agriculture with Molly Van Dop and Michael Hanemann at UC Berkeley.

Professor of Epidemiology

School of Public Health

Research Areas: Waterborne infectious diseases (domestic, developing country, and recreational water settings), Clinical trial design (individual and community-level)

Sample Projects: Cluster-randomised controlled trials of individual and combined water, sanitation, hygiene and nutritional interventions in rural Bangladesh and Kenya: the WASH Benefits study, Health risks associated with ocean exposure and fecal indicator bacteria following rainstorms: a longitudinal cohort study of surfers in San Diego, California, Spillover Effects of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions on Child Health

James H. House and Hiram H. Hurd Professor of Environmental Regulation;

Associate Dean, Faculty Development and Research; Co-Director, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment
Berkeley Law

Research Areas: Environmental law, natural resources law, and law and science

Sample Projects: Hydropower relicensing in California

Professor  

ENV Program, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Areas: Drinking Water Treatment; Technology Innovation; Technology Maturation for Impact

Sample projects: Arsenic remediation of groundwater used for drinking; Advanced technologies for Capacitive Deionization; Low cost effective remediation of excess fluoride from groundwater used for drinking

Professor and Faculty Director of the CITRIS Intelligent Water Infrastructures and Adaptive Cities Initiative

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Areas: Laboratory earthquakes and nanoseismology, wireless sensors networks, snow water hydrology, internet of water, geophysics and wave propagation, geothermal energy, rock mechanics

Sample Projects: Operates the largest wireless network in the world, monitoring forest hydrology of snowmelt and water balance in the Sierra Nevada. The wireless sensor networks research covers a wide range of applications – from the first use of the Berkeley Mote to monitor the seismic safety of wood-frame houses to measuring the seismic response of the Masada mountain in Israel to measuring environmental hazards at Chinese historical sites such as Dunhuang.

Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist and Adjunct Assistant Professor; Co-Director of the Cannabis Research Center at UC Berkeley

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

Professor of the Graduate School

Environmental Engineering

Research Areas: Biological water and wastewater treatment processes; biofilms and their development; analysis of full-scale treatment reactors; nutrient control; sustainable development

Sample Projects: Deammonification of anaerobic sludge digestate; Better drinking water quality in storage; Solar optics-based active pasteurization for greywater reuse and integrated thermal building control; Physics of foaming in anaerobic digesters; Sustainable development: physical and moral issues; New sources of water; Toward a definition of sustainability.

Associate Professor

Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design

Research Areas: Urban ecology and hydrology in relationship to physical design and social justice issues, adapting urban districts and shore zones to the new challenges associated with climate change, adaptation and coastal design

Sample Projects: Urban water system design that supports salmon health, understanding the potential for designs to help protect coastal communities as sea levels rise internationally, adaptation and coastal design in the San Francisco Bay Area

Deputy Director, Climate Readiness Institute; Program Domain Lead, Earth Systems and Society Program

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Research Areas: Hydrology and climate change; quantitative Earth system science; decision-relevant metrics for climate models; stakeholder engagement

Sample Projects: Project Hyperion; Water-Energy Resilience Research Institute

Director of the Wheeler Water Institute

Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law

Research Areas: Water resources policy and management; science-policy interface; translational research and synthesis

Sample Projects: Evaluating and Improving the Relationships Between Regulation and Innovation in the Wastewater Sector; Developing Water Data Systems to Improve Decision Making; Recharge Net Metering to Enhance Groundwater Sustainability; Addressing Institutional Vulnerabilities in California’s Water Allocation Institutions; Evaluating the Benefits for and Pathways to Small Water System Consolidations

Professor

Environmental Planning

Research Areas: fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, river restoration, environmental planning, environmental science, managing flood-prone lands, urban rivers, and sediment in rivers and reservoirs

Sample Projects:  The social connectivity of urban rivers, analyzing the city-river relationships over time and current urban river revitalization efforts; The social life of the sediment balance, examining river-basin impacts of dams on downstream rivers and deltas from both geomorphological and environmental history perspectives; and Strategic dam planning for improved tradeoffs between hydropower generation and environment.

Professor

Environmental Engineering

Research Areas: Detection, removal, and inactivation of pathogens in water and sludge; Water reuse; Natural treatment systems; Drinking water and sanitation in developing countries.

Sample Projects: Disinfection of Water by Sunlight; Evaluation of 24×7 versus Intermittent Water Supply in Hubli-Dharwad, India; Tertiary Treatment for Water Reuse; Wastewater Irrigation of Food Crops; and Stormwater Treatment by Bioinfiltration.

Professor, Energy and Resources Group
Affiliate Faculty, Geography, Institute for South Asia Studies

Research Areas: Water and devel­op­ment; tech­nol­ogy and devel­op­ment; com­mon prop­erty resources; and social sci­ence research meth­ods

Sample Projects: Access to water and san­i­ta­tion for the rural and urban poor, the role of tech­nol­ogy in improv­ing liveli­hoods, and pub­lic per­cep­tions of energy and cli­mate change poli­cies.

Assistant Professor

Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management

Research Areas: Freshwater Ecology

Sample Projects: 2019-23 Collaborative Proposal: NSF MSB-FRA: Scaling Climate, Connectivity, and Communities in Streams; 2019-20 California Institute for Water Resources (CIWR) Water Research Program. Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of the Multi-Scale Effects of Drought on Riverine Biodiversity; 2019-20  California Department of Fish and Wildlife Awards. Reconnecting Delta food webs: evaluating the influence of tidal marsh restoration on energy flow and prey availability for native fishes; 2019-20 Subaward from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland. Advancing quantitative methods to understand causal pathways and feedbacks within complex socio-hydrological systems.

Co-Director of Berkeley Water Center, Malozemoff Professor in Mineral Engineering, Director of Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering (IESE)

Environmental Engineering

Research Areas: Environmental chemistry, water recycling, contaminant fate in receiving waters, natural treatment systems, reinvention of urban water systems

Sample Projects: The Fate of Trace Organic Compounds in Treatment Wetlands, In Situ Chemical Oxidation of Persistent Organic Contaminants

Researcher

Institute of International Studies

Research Areas: Comparative studies between the US and the EU on Flood Risk Management Policies

Sample Projects: Titles of water-related projects you are working on: Sustainable Floodplains Project. This project explores sustainable flood management strategies in the US and the EU with the goal of finding tools that can help to improve flood risk management in different countries. As an example, our book “Managing Flood Risk: Innovative Approaches from Big Floodplain Rivers and Urban Streams” presents voices of those on the front lines of implementing a new paradigm in flood risk management, each river with a unique set of challenges and opportunities derived from its geography as well as differences in governance between America and European contexts.